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<FONT size=5 color=black><B>SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 26TH FEBRUARY 1974 14TH CONVERSATION WITH DR. ALLAN W. ANDERSON 'DEATH'</B></FONT><br><br><br><DIV class='PP2'>A: Mr Krishnamurti in our last conversation we were beginning to talk about consciousness and its relation to death in the context of living as a total movement.  And we even touched on the word reincarnation toward the end when we had to draw our conversation to its conclusion.  I do hope we can begin to continue there.
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K: You see one of the factors in death is the mind is so frightened.  We are so frightened of that very word and nobody talks about it.  It isn't a daily conversation.  It is something to be avoided, something that is inevitable, for god's sake keep it as far away as possible.
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A: We even paint corpses to make them look as if they are not dead.
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K: That's the most absurd thing.  Now what we are discussing, sir, is, isn't it, the understanding of death, its relation to living and this thing called love.  One cannot possibly understand the immensity, and it is immense, this thing called death, unless there is a real freedom from fear.  That's why we talked sometime ago about the problem of fear.  Without really freeing the mind, unless the mind really frees itself from fear there is no possibility of understanding the extraordinary beauty, strength and the vitality of death.
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A: That's a very, very, remarkable way to put it - the vitality of death.  And yet normally we regard it as the total negation of life.
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K: The negation of life.  That's right.  So if we are enquiring into the question of death fear must be completely non-existent in us.  Then I can proceed.  Then I can find out what death means.  We have touched a little bit on reincarnation, the belief that is maintained from the East which has no reality in daily life.  It is like going to church every Sunday and being mischievous for the rest of the six days.  So, you follow, a person who is really serious, really attentive, goes into this question of death, he must understand what it means, the quality of it, not the ending of it. That's what we will go into a little this time.
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The ancient Egyptians, the pharaohs and all that and so on, they prepared for death.  They said we will cross that river with all our goods, with all with all our chariots, with all our belongings, with all our property; and therefore their caves, their tombs are filled with all the things of their daily life, corn, you know all that.  So living was only a means to an ending, dying.  That's one way of looking at it.  The other is reincarnation, which is the Indian, Asiatic outlook.  And there is this whole idea of resurrection, of the Christians.  Reborn, carried, the Gabriel Angel, and all that, to heaven and you will be rewarded.  Now, what is the fact?  These are all theories, suppositions, beliefs and non-facts.  I mean, someone supposed to be born Jesus comes out of the grave, resurrected physically.  That is just a belief.  There were no cameras there, ten people say, yes I saw it.  It is only somebody imagined.  We will go into that a little bit later.
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So there is this living and preparing for death as the ancient Egyptians did.  Then there is the reincarnation.  Then there is resurrection.  Now, if one isn't frightened - you follow, sir - deeply, then what is death?  What is it that dies, apart from the organism?  The organism may continue if you look after it very carefully for 80, 90, or 100 years.  If you have no disease, if you have no accidents, if there is a way of living sanely, healthily, perhaps you will last 100 years or 110 years.  And then what?  You follow, sir?  You live 100 years, for what?  For this kind of life - fighting, quarrelling, bickering, bitterness, anger, jealousy, futility, a meaningless existence.  It is a meaningless existence as we are living now.
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A: And in terms of our previous remarks, this is all the content of consciousness.
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K: That's right.  So what is it that dies?  And what is it I am frightened of, one is frightened of?  You follow?  What is it one is frightened of in death?  Losing the known?  Losing my wife?  Losing my house?  Losing all the things I have acquired?  Losing this content of consciousness?  You follow?  So, can the content of consciousness be totally emptied?  You follow, sir?
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A: Yes I do.
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K: Which is the living.  The dying is the living, when the content is totally emptied.  That means no attachment.  It isn't a brutal cutting off, but the understanding of attachment, the understanding of dependency, the understanding of acquisition, power, position, anxiety, all that.  The emptying of that is the real death. And therefore the emptying of consciousness means the consciousness which has created its own limitation, by its content, comes to an end.  I wonder, have you got it?
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A: Yes, yes, yes.  I was following you very carefully and it occurred to me that there is a radical relation between birth and death, that the two, when they are looked upon as moments in a total cycle are not grasped at the depth level that you are beginning to speak about.
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K: Yes sir.
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A: Am I correct?
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K: Correct.
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A: Good, please do go on.
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K: So, death becomes a living when the content of consciousness, which makes its own frontier, its own limitation, comes to an end. And this is not a theory, not a speculative, intellectual grasp, but the actual perception of attachment.  I am taking that as an example, being attached to something - property, man, woman, the book I have written, or the knowledge I have acquired.  The attachment.  And the battle to be detached.  Because attachment brings pain.  Therefore I say to myself, I must be detached.  And the battle begins.  And the whole content of my consciousness is this, the battle which we described previously.  Now can that content be emptied - empty itself?  Not emptied by an act of perception, empty itself.  Which means can this whole content be observed, with its unconscious content?  You follow, sir?
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A: Yes, I do.  I'm thinking.
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K: I can be consciously aware of the content of my consciousness - my house, my property, my wife, my children, my job, the things I have acquired, the things I have learned.  I can be consciously aware of all that.  But also there is a deeper content in the very recesses of my mind which is racial, collective, acquired, the things that unconsciously I have gathered, the influences, the pressures, the strains of living in a world that is corrupt.  All that has seeped in, all that has gathered in there.
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A: Both personal and impersonal.
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K: Impersonal, yes.
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A: This includes then what the depth psychologists are calling collective unconscious.
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K: I don't what they are calling it.
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A: As well as the personal consciousness.
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K: Collective as well.  So there is that.  Now can all that be exposed.  Because that is very important.  Because if I really want to go, if the mind really wants to understand and grasp the full meaning of death, the vastness of it, the great quality of a mind that says, yes that's ended - you follow, it gives a tremendous vitality, energy.  So, my question is: can the mind be aware totally of all the content, hidden as well as the open, the collective, the personal, the racial, the transitory?  You follow?  The whole of that.  Now, we say it is possible through analysis.
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A: Yes we do.
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K: I said, analysis is paralysis.  Because every analysis must be perfect, complete.  And you are frightened that it might not be complete.  And if you have not completed it you carry it over as a memory which will then analyse the next incident.  So each analysis brings its own incompleteness.
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A: Oh, certainly, yes.
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K: Therefore it is a total paralysis.
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A: In following what you are saying, I'm very taken with what we usually regard as death which has a very clear relationship to what you've said about the endless series of analytical acts.
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K: Yes, sir.
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A: We regard death as terminus in terms of a line.
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K: Quite, because we think laterally.
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A: We think laterally, exactly.  But what you're saying is, on the contrary, we must regard this vertically.
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K: Yes.
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A: And in the regarding of it vertically we no longer see, please check me if I am off here, we no longer see death as simply a moment of termination to certain trajectory repetition.  But there is a total qualitative change here which is not the cessation of something that we have to regret as though we had lost something valuable.
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K: Yes, I am leaving my wife and children.
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A: Right.
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K: And my property, my blasted bank account.
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A: Yes, yes.
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K: You see, sir, if one can go very deeply into this: there is this content, which is my consciousness, acquired, inherited imposed, influenced, propaganda, attachment, detachment, anxiety, fear, pleasure, all that, and also the hidden things.  I'm asking myself, since analysis is really paralysis, not an intellectual supposition, but actually it is not a complete act, analysis can never produce a complete act, the very word analysis means to break up, you know, the breaking up.
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A: Loosen up.
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K: Loosen up, break it up.  Therefore I reject that totally.  I won't analyse because I see the stupidity, the paralytic process of it.  Then what am I to do?  Are you following?  Because that's the tradition, introspective, or analysis by myself or by a professional, which is now the fad and so on, so on, so on.  So if the mind sees the truth of it, and therefore analysis falls away, then what is the mind to do with the content?
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A: Yes, I do see that.
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K: We know what the content is.  We don't have thoroughly describe.  Now, what is it to do?  It has to be emptied.  Otherwise it is merely continuity.
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A: No it is no use analyzing what is already there because that will not change what is there in anyway shape or form.  That seems to be very, very plain.  Perhaps you would for a moment explain why we simply refuse to see that.  We do believe that an analytical enquiry is ordered to a revelation.  We do believe that.
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K: No sir.  You can see it in a minute.  Analysis implies the analyzer and the analysed.
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A: Yes.
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K: The analsyer is the analysed.
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A: Yes, we are back to the observer and the observed.
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K: I am analyzing my anger.  Who is the analyzer?  Part of the fragment which is anger.  So the analyzer pretends to be different from the analysed.  But when I see the truth that the analyzer is the analysed then a totally different action takes place.  Then there is no conflict between the analyzer and the analysed.  There is instant action, a perception, which is the ending and going beyond the 'what is'.
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A: The reason I asked for the explanation was because of the concern raised earlier about knowledge.
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K: After all the observer is knowledge.
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A: Yes, I was concerned that study, in its proper form was not regarded in the context of our discussion as unprofitable as such.
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K: No.
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A: We don't mean that.
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K: We didn't even discuss it.  That's so obvious.
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A: Yes, well it is obvious in terms of our discussion, but the thing that concerns me is that so ingrained is the notion that, for instance, in the story I told about when I came to hear you years ago, I began doing analysis while I was listening to your words and consequently I could hardly end up with anything qualitatively differently from what I came in with.  But you see I didn't see that at the time and in video-taping our conversations here this will be listened to, and when we say, yes, about knowledge, this is obvious, in the context of our conversation it is.  But then I'm thinking of...
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K: Not only in the context of our conversation, it is so.
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A: It is as such.
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K: It is.
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A: Exactly, I couldn't agree, but immediately I flashed back to my own behaviour, and I know that I was not alone in that because I listened to other conversations regarding it at the time.  But, yes, I see what you mean now about analysis as such.  It seems to me very clear.
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K: Analysis implies, sir, the analyzer and the analysed.
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A: Precisely.
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K: The analyzer is the analysed.  And also analysis implies time, duration.  I must take time to uncover, unearth, to uncover, and it will take me rest of my life.
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A: This is a confusion we have about death too with relation to time.
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K: That's right.  I'm coming to that.
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A: Yes, of course, please do, yes.
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K: So, the mind perceiving discards analysis completely.  Not because it's not profitable, not because it doesn't get me where I want, but I see the impossibility of emptying the consciousness of its content, if I approach - if the mind approaches through that channel: analyzer, time, and the utter futility at the end of 40 years I am still analyzing.
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A: And the content of my consciousness has not qualitatively changed at all.
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K: Changed at all.
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A: No, it's become intensified in its corruption.
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K: That's right.  That's right.  So.  But the mind must see its content, must be totally aware of it, not fragments of it.  How is that to be done?  You follow, sir?
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A: Yes I do.
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K: Because that's very important in relation to death.  Because the content of my consciousness is consciousness.  That consciousness is me, my ego, my saying, I and you, we and they - whether they be the communists, they the catholic, they the protestant or they the Hindu.  So it is very important to find out whether it is possible to empty consciousness of its content.  Which means the dying to the me. You follow?
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A: Yes I do.
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K: Because that is the me.
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A: This is where the terror starts.
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K: That's where the terror starts.
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A: Precisely.  There's the intuition that if I do to the content of this consciousness that I am wiped out.
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K: Yes, so I, who have worked, who have lived a righteous life or unrighteous life, who have done so much, mischief or good, I have struggled to better myself, I've been so kind, so gentle, so angry, so bitter, and when you say, empty your consciousness, it means you are asking me to die to all that.  So, you are touching at the very root of fear.
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A: Yes exactly.
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K: At the root of terror of not being.  Oh yes, that's it, sir. And I want to immortalize that me.  I do it through books, writing a book and say, famous book.  Or I paint.  Or through paint, through works, through good acts, through building this or that, I immortalize myself.
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A: This has very pernicious effects within the family, because we must have a son in order to...
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K: ...carry on
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A: ...immortalize the name in time.
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K: Therefore the family becomes a danger.
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A: Exactly.
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K: So, look what we have done, sir: the ancient Egyptians immortalized themselves, made their life immortal by thinking of carrying on.
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A: Perpetuity.
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K: Perpetuating.  And the robbers come and tear it all to pieces. Tutankhamen is merely a mask now, a golden mask with a mummy, and so on.  So man has sought immortality through works, through every way to find that which is immortal, that is, beyond mortality.  Right?
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A: It's a very remarkable thing that the very word immortal is a negative.
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K: Yes, not mortal.
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A.  Yes, it's not saying what it is.
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K: We are going to find out what it is.
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A: Good.
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K: You follow, sir, this is a very, very serious thing.  It isn't a plaything between two people who are enjoying a discussion.  It is a tremendously important thing.
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A: I was laughing at the irony of it.  That inherent in the structure of that word there is a warning, and we just go right through the red light.
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K: Right.
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A: Yes, please do go on.
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K: So, what is immortality?  Not the book.
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A: Oh no.
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K: Not the painting which I have done, not going to the moon and putting some idiotic flag up there.  Not living a righteous life, or not living a righteous life.  So what is immortality?  The cathedrals are beautiful, marvelous cathedrals, an earthquake comes, gone.  You build, you carve out of marble a marvelous thing of Michelangelo, an earthquake, fire, destroyed.  Some lunatic comes along with a hammer and breaks it up.  So it is in none of those.  Tight?
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A: Right.
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K: Because that is capable of being destroyed.  Every statue becomes a dead thing,every poem, every painting.  So then one asks, what is immortality?  It's not in the building, just see it, sir. It's not in the cathedral.  It's not in the Saviour which you have invented, which thought has invented.  Not in the gods that man has created out of his own image.  Then what is immortality?  Because that is related to consciousness and to death.  Unless I find that out, death is a terror.
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A: Of course, of course.
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K: I have tried to immortalize myself, become immortal by the thought that there is a Brahman, there is a god, there is eternality, there is a nameless one, and I will do everything to approach him. Therefore I'll lead a righteous life.  Therefore I will pray, I will beg, I will obey, I will live a life of poverty, chastity, and so on, so on, so on, in order to have that immortal reality with me.  But I know all that is born of thought.  Right, sir?
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A: Yes, as soon as...
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K: Wait a minute, sir, see what happens.
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A: Yes.
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K: So I see thought and its products are the children of barren women.
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A: Precisely.
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K: See what takes place.  Then what is immortality?  The beauty in the church - not I built the church - the beauty in the cathedral, the beauty in the poem, the beauty in the sculpture, the beauty, not the object of beauty.
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A: The beauty itself.
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K: Itself.  That is immortal.  And I cannot grasp that, the mind cannot grasp it because beauty is not in the field of consciousness.
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A: Yes.  You see what you have said again stands it all on its head.  We think when something dies that we have cherished, that is beautiful, that beauty dies in some sense with that which has passed away.
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K: Passed away, yes.
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A: Actually it's the feeling of being bereft of that beauty that I regarded as my privilege to have personal access to.  The belief that that has perished, not simply been lost because what is lost is by its nature predisposed to be found.  But to perish is to be wiped out utterly, isn't it?  And so the belief is deep.
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K: Oh, very, very.
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A: Extremely deep with respect to what we mean by perish.  In fact the word isn't used very often, it's frightening, it's a very frightening word.  We are always frightened about losing things, hardly ever do we say something perishes.  Now back to what I mentioned about standing it on its head.  The image came to my mind as a metaphor.  I hope not one of those images we've been talking about.  That beauty, rather than being imprisoned, and therefore taken down to the utter depths of nullity, when a thing perishes, has simply let it go.  In some sense beauty has let this expression go. That is upside down from what is usually thought.
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K: I know, I know.
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A: And it has probably let it go precisely on time.
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K: That's right.
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A: That's what's so marvelous, yes, yes.
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K: So, immortality we have said is within the field of time.
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A: In the one field.
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K: Right.
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A: Yes.
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K: The field of time.
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A: Yes.
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K: And death is also then in the field of time.  Because I have created, through thought, the things of time.  And death is the ending or the beginning of a state that is timeless.  Of that I am frightened.  So I want everything preserved in the field of time. You follow, sir?
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A: Yes, yes we think it could...
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K: And that is what we call immortal - the statue, the poems, the church, the cathedral, and I see also all that is corruptible, destroyed by one accident, or by an earthquake, everything is gone. So immortality is not within the field of time.  And time is thought.
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A: Of course, yes that follows.
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K: Of course.  So anything that thought creates must be within the field of time.  And yet thought is trying to seek immortality, which is immortality of itself, and the things it has created.
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A: Yes.
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K: So, then the problem is, can the mind see all this, see it? Not imagine that it is seeing it.
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A: No, actually see it.
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K: Actually see it.
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A: Yes, the remark I made before when you began saying the field of time, and I said, the one field, I didn't mean that the field of time, as you've described it, is the one field, but that we could be so appallingly...
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K: ...blind.
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A: ...mistaken and blind.
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K: Ignorant.
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A: The field of time is another fragment.
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K: That's right.
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A: It's the only field.  And what really struck me was this misuse of thought generates the most appalling avarice.
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K: Yes, sir.
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A: I'm walling myself up in stone.  Yes, please.
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K: So, the mind, perceiving all this, if it is alert, if it has been watchful all the time we have been discussing, must inevitably see the whole content exposed, without any effort.  It's like reading a map.  You spread it out and look.  But if you want to go in a direction, then you don't look at the whole map.  Then you say, I want to go from here to there, the direction is there, so many miles, and you do - you don't look at the rest.  What we are asking is, no direction but just look.  Look at the content of your consciousness without direction, without choice.  Be aware of it without any exertion of discernment.  Be choicelessly aware of this extraordinary map.  Then that choiceless awareness gives you that tremendous energy to go beyond it.  But you need energy to go beyond it.
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A: This leads me to the notion of reincarnation that we began to touch on a little earlier: that I see the demonic root in that.
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K: Yes, sir.  You see, sir: reincarnate next life.  Nobody says, incarnate now.
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A: Yes, exactly.
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K: You follow, sir?
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A: Yes, I do, I do.
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K: You can only incarnate now when you die to the content.
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A: And there is...
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K: You can be reborn, regenerated totally if you die to the content.
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A: Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  And there is a terrible truth on the dark side, the demonic side, to this doctrine of reincarnation, because if that content of consciousness is not emptied out then it must prevail.
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K: So what happens?
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A: Then it really does, yes.
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K: It prevails.  So what happens?  I do not know, as a human being, how to empty this thing.  I'm not even interested.  I'm only frightened.
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A: Only scared to death.
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K: Scared to death.  And I preserve something, and I die, am burned or buried under ground.  The content goes on.  As we said, the content of me is your content also, it's not so very different.
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A: No, no, no.
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K: Slightly modified, slightly exaggerated, given certain tendencies which depend on your conditioning of environments and so on, so on, but it is essentially the same consciousness.  Unless a human being empties that consciousness, that consciousness goes on like a river -  collecting, accumulating, all that's going on.  And out of that river comes the expression, or the manifestation of the one that is lost.  When the mediums, seances, all those say, your brother, your uncle, your wife is here.  What has happened is they have manifested themselves out of that stream which is the continuous consciousness of struggle, pain, unhappiness, all that.  And a man who has observed and has looked at the consciousness and empties it, he doesn't belong to that stream at all.  Then he is living each moment anew because he is dying each moment.  You understand, sir?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Oh, yes I do, yes I do.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: There is no accumulation of the me which has to be expressed. He is dying every minute; living every minute, and dying every minute.  Therefore in that there is - what shall I say - there is no content.  You follow, sir?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: It is like a tremendous energy in action.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: This gives a totally different understanding of what we mean by the phrase, in the after life.  On the one hand there is this continuity in disordered content of consciousness...
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: It is totally disordered, that's right.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: ...which is not radically affected qualitatively with respect to its nature, simply because somebody has stopped breathing for good.  No.  It's on its way.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: On its way.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: And therefore the attempt that is often made on the part of persons to contact this stream of consciousness after the death of a person, when made within the same quality of consciousness, attains nothing but a reinforcement...
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Yes, that's right.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: ...within their own personal life.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: That's right.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: And it does a terrible thing to their content of consciousness, which has gone on, since it also feeds that some more.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: That's right.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes, I do see that.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: A person came to see me and his wife was dead.  And he really thought he loved her.  So he said, I must see my wife again.  Can you help me?  I said, which wife do you want to see?  The one that cooked?  The one that bore the children?  The one that gave you sex? The one that quarrelled with you?  The one that dominated you, frightened you?  He said, I don't want to meet any of those.  I want to meet the good of her.  You follow, sir?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes, yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: The image of the good he has built out of her.  None of the ugly things, or what he considered ugly things, but the idea of the good which he had culled out of her, and that is the image he wants to meet.  I said, don't be infantile.  You are so utterly immature when you have slept with her, and got angry with her, all that you don't want, you want just the image which you have about her goodness, I said.  And you know, sir, he began to cry, really cry for the first time.  He said, afterwards, I have cried when she died, but the tears were of self pity, my loneliness, my sense of, you follow, lack of things.  Now I am crying, I cry because I see what I have done.  You understand, sir?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes, I do.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: So to understand death there must be no fear.  The fear exists and the terror of it exists only when the content is not understood. And the content is the 'me'.  And the 'me' is the chair, you follow, sir?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: The thing I am attached to.  It is so stupid.  And I am frightened of that, the bank account, the family, you follow?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Ah, yes, yes I do.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: So unless one is really, deeply serious in this matter, you can't incarnate now, in the deep sense of that word; and therefore immortality is in the book, in the statue, in the cathedral, in the things I have put together, the things I have put together by thought.  That's all the field of time.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Right.  It just occurred to me what a terrible thing we have been doing so often over and over again to Plato by this perennial attempt at academic analysis of the text, when he plainly said that the business of the philosopher, by which he didn't mean the analyzer in this mad way that we have been observing that goes on - the business of the philosopher, namely the one who is concerned with a radical change and rebirth, which he associated with wisdom; the business of the philosopher is to practice dying, to practice dying. I don't think he meant routine, repetition, die, die, die, die.  I think he puts it with an 'ing', because he doesn't want to fall out of act.  I know I use this phrase all the time but it came to me early in our in conversations and it seems to say, for me, what I want to say.  I have to say I learned it from you, though I don't want to put the words in your mouth.  But it's possible to fall out of act into the terror and the demonic stream of time, but when one is in act the whole thing is an ongoing move.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: So, sir, time has a stop.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Precisely.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: See the beauty of it, sir.  And it is that beauty which is immortal, not the things which thought has created.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Right.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: So living is dying.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Right.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: And love is essentially dying to the me.  Not the things which thought has said this is love - love-sex, love-pleasure.  You follow? All that.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: It is, dying to time is love.  So living, love and death are one thing, not divisive, not separated, not divorced, not in the field of time but it is completely a living, moving thing, indivisible.  And that is immortal.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: So.  Now, most of us are educated wrongly.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: How true that is.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: From childhood we are never taught to be serious.  From childhood we are taught the cultivation of thought, the cultivation of thought and the expression and the marvels of thought.  All our philosophies, books, everything is based on that.  And when you say, die to all that, you really awaken the terror of not knowing.  This gives me security in knowing.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Then knowledge becomes the field of my safety.  And you ask me, give all that up, die to all that.  And I say, you are insane. How can I die to that, that's part of me.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: There's a very, very beautiful, Zen saying that seems to relate to this when it's understood correctly.  It speaks of jumping off the cliff with hands free.  Jumping off a cliff with hands free. The hands...
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: ...that hold.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: ...that hold, always grasping the past or reaching out towards the future, and we never get off that horizontal track.  It's like a Lionel train, it forever goes on.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: So then comes the question, what is living in the present? Death is the future.  And I've lived for 40 years, all the accumulation.  What is the present?  The present is the death of the content.  You follow, sir?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: I don't know, it has immense beauty in that.  Because that means no conflict, you follow sir, no tomorrow. But if you tell a man who loves, who is going to enjoy that man or woman tomorrow, when you say, there is no tomorrow, he says, what are you talking about?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes, I know.  Sometimes you will say when you have said something, it sounds absurd.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Of course.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: And, of course, in relation to the way we have been taught to do analysis it does sound absurd.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Therefore, sir, can we educate children, students, to live totally differently?  Live and understand and act with this sense of understanding the content and the beauty of it all?
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: If I've understood you correctly there's only one answer to that question: yes, yes.  It sounds - I think the word here wouldn't be, absurd - it would be something like, wild.  Yes, I see now what you mean about death and birth as non-temporally related in terms of the question that we raised about their relation earlier, because when you say there is this incarnation...
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: ...now.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: ...now, upon the instant...
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Yes, sir.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: ...then...
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: If you see the beauty of it, sir, the thing takes place.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Then it's happened.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: It is not the result of mentation.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: No.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: It is not the result of man's thinking, thinking, thinking. This is actual perception of 'what is'.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: And the amazement that it is the same energy at root.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Yes, sir.  Yes, sir.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: It doesn't take something over here that's a different energy called god.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: No, that's an outside agency brought in here.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: No.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: It is the same wasted energy, dissipated energy which is no longer dissipated.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Exactly.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Therefore, it is...
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Exactly.  This throws a totally - I'm beginning now to use the words, absolutely and totally, which in the Academy, you know, we're, advised to be very careful about.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: I know.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: But, I'm sorry about all that, the fact remains that it is total.  It is total.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: There is a total change.  And the transformation of each individual is a total one.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: It is not within the field of time and knowledge.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Is not within the field of time and knowledge.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: You see how they are related.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Yes, and then the profound seriousness of it that attends when one sees the rest of that sentence of yours.  It is the responsibility of each.  And if I may add just one other thing here because it seems to me that it is coming together.  That it isn't the responsibility of one over against the other to do something.  It is to come with and to, as the other is coming to and with, and we begin together...
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Yes, sir.  Share together.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: ...to have a look.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Learn together.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Just quietly having a look.  And in that activity, which is not planned - one of the amazing things about this conversation is that it, to use your beautiful word, flowers.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: It flowers, yes.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: It doesn't require an imposition without of a contrivance.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: No.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Of a management.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Or management, quite.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: Somehow it grows out of itself.  It's this thing of growing out of itself that relates to this thing that you've been talking about in consciousness.  By pointing to the head I don't mean consciousness is here, but it's the 'out of itself', it's like that water that turns in on itself.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: But it remains water.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A: It remains water.  Exactly.  This has been a wonderful revelation, the whole thing about death, living and love.  I do hope when we have our next conversation that we could begin to pursue this in relation to education even further.
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
K: Further, yes, sir. </DIV></TD></TR></TABLE></BODY></HTML>
